Red Bluff Daily News

December 06, 2013

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TEHAMA COUNTY
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T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5
Mammoth proposal
Jackson elected
Red Bluff mayor
By RICH GREENE
DN Staff Writer
Daniele Jackson is the
new mayor of Red Bluff.
The Red Bluff City
Council elected Jackson to
the position for the upcoming year after outgoing
Mayor Wayne Brown nominated her to the post.
Brown said even though
he often falls on different
sides of issues than Jackson,
he has gained a lot of respect
for her during her three
years on the City Council
and the tenacity she has
fighting for her causes.
Councilman Rob Schmid
seconded the nomination,
while Councilman Clay
Parker was the lone no vote
against her election.
Raymond Eliggi was
Illustration courtesy the Ndovo Foundation
This artist's illustration incorporates a pond on Diamond Ranch and what it might look like
with a elephant tent camp.
Group pitches elephant reserve in Tehama County
By RICH GREENE
DN Staff Writer
A group of philanthropists and animal researchers believe Tehama County would be the ideal location for — of
all things — an elephant reserve.
Representatives from the Oakland
Zoo and Ndovo Foundation shared
their vision Thursday at a Tehama
County Planning Commission meeting
of a 4,900-acre facility that at peak
capacity would house around 50
African elephants.
The proposed site would be at Diamond Ranch, located northwest of
Bowman Road, about 1,400 feet north
of State Route 36W within the unincorporated area of northern Tehama
County.
The proposal includes several
accessory uses such as a large barn,
housing quarters for research and security personnel, out buildings, specialized fencing, feed storage areas, veterinary services and internal and external
education and research facilities.
Don't expect Earth's largest terrestrial animal to begin roaming Tehama's
rolling hills anytime soon.
The project's leaders said the entire
plan would be developed in three phases that would take between 50-100
years to compete.
Roger McNamee, a founding member of the Ndovo Foundation, said it
"If you don't want it here, let us know."
— Ndovo Foundation founder Roger McNamee
would take at least three years of planning and construction before the
reserve was ready to house its first elephant.
The reserve would then begin with a
handful of elephants that would take up
just a small portion of the Diamond
Ranch property, about 540 acres.
Thursday's presentation in front of
the Planning Commission was informational only, as the group moves forward with the process of meeting with
local stakeholders to share their own
vision as well as explain the benefits
they foresee coming to Tehama County.
McNamee said there is only one
timetable he has for the project and it
has to do with getting an answer quicker than later on whether his group
should begin looking elsewhere.
"If you don't want it here, let us
know," McNamee said Thursday.
McNamee said he hopes the county
would get excited about the project and
develop a sense of pride in the elephants over the years as home to a oneof-a-kind reserve in America.
McNamee said he has endowed the
project with enough money to cover
the first two phases and plans to have
everything fully funded.
Oakland Zoo CEO Dr. Joel Parrott
said his organization would maintain
care of the elephants.
Parrott is also a founding member
of Ndovo, which borrows its name
from the Swahili word for elephant.
Parrott said Tehama County would
benefit from the reserve through the
educational experiences that could be
offered to local schools. Those educational advantages, he said, would
extend beyond K-12 and into local college's veterinary programs.
The reserve would also become a
sought after destination for other
schools in the Bay Area and Northern
California, which would be part of the
added economic activity that would be
brought to Tehama, he said.
He said economic activity would
further increase through local staffing,
product purchases and construction of
the facility.
That construction would include
two sets of fences — one 8-feet high to
keep humans away from the elephants
and a second elephant barrier.
The latter would not be electric, but
would require extensive work, enough
to employ around 10 people at a time
See GROUP, page 7A
Daniele Jackson
unanimously elected to
Jackson's former position of
Mayor Pro Tem.
"You really think I'll
have enough experience,"
See MAYOR, page 7A
2 students arrested
after gang fight
The first few days on the job for Vista Preparatory Academy's new gang resistance school resource officer have
already been eventful with a gang-related fight resulting in
the arrest of two high school students.
The Red Bluff Police Department assigned Officer Sean
Baxter to Vista on Monday beginning an extensive Gang
Resistance Education And Training (GREAT) program
being funded through a national grant.
On Wednesday several students at the school reported to
Baxter that a group of four older juveniles had come onto the
Vista campus to the fence surrounding the track and field and
challenged several students to a fight, according to a department press release.
The students reported the older juveniles claimed to be
gang members, were dressed in gang attire and threw gang
signs.
See GANG, page 7A
Red Bluff man arrested with
dozens of stolen credit cards
A 32-year-old Red Bluff
man was found with more
than 40 stolen credit card
numbers after he checked
into a motel room using one
of them Wednesday morning.
The Red Bluff Police
Department responded to a
report around 10:30 a.m.
that a stolen credit card had
been used to rent a motel
room at the America's Best
Value Inn., according to a
department press release.
Officers learned the man
that had rented the room at
210 S. Main St. was Michael
David Hency.
The investigation led
officers to find additional
property that had belonged
to the victim of the stolen
credit card inside the motel
room and on Hency.
Officers also found
numerous other credit cards
See CARDS, page 7A
Nelson Mandela, South Africa's peacemaker, dies
JOHANNESBURG
(AP) — Nelson Mandela
was a master of forgiveness.
South Africa's first black
president spent nearly a third
of his life as a prisoner of
apartheid, yet he sought to
win over its defeated
guardians in a relatively
peaceful transition of power
that inspired the world.
As head of state, the former boxer, lawyer and
inmate lunched with the
prosecutor who argued successfully for his incarceration. He sang the apartheidera Afrikaans anthem at his
inauguration and traveled
hundreds of miles to have
tea with the widow of the
prime minister in power at
the time he was sent to
prison.
It was this generosity of
spirit that made Mandela,
who died Thursday at the
age of 95, a global symbol
of sacrifice and reconciliation in a world often jarred
by conflict and division.
7 5 8 5 5 1 6 9 0 0 1 9
Mandela's stature as a
fighter against apartheid —
the system of white racist
rule he called evil — and a
seeker of peace with his enemies was on a par with that
of other men he admired:
American civil rights
activist Martin Luther King
Jr. and Indian independence
leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, both of whom were
assassinated while actively
engaged in their callings.
Mandela's
death
deprived the world of one of
one of the great figures of
modern history and set the
stage for days of mourning
and reflection about a colossus of the 20th century who
projected astonishing grace,
resolve and good humor.
Dressed in black, South
African President Jacob
Zuma made the announcement on television. He said
Mandela died ''peacefully,''
surrounded by family, at
around 8:50 p.m.
''We've lost our greatest
son. Our nation has lost its
greatest son. Our people
have lost a father,'' Zuma
said. ''Although we knew
that this day would come,
AP file photo
Nelson Mandela is seen at his home in Qunu,
South Africa in this file photo taken Aug. 6, 2012.
nothing can diminish our
sense of a profound and
enduring loss.''
At times, Mandela
embraced his iconic status,
appearing before a rapturous
crowd in London's Wembley Stadium soon after his
1990 release from prison.
Sometimes, he sought to
downplay it, uneasy about
the perils of being put on a
pedestal. In an unpublished
manuscript, written while in
prison, Mandela acknowledged that leaders of the
anti-apartheid movement
dominated the spotlight but
said they were ''only part of
the story,'' and every activist
was ''like a brick which
makes up our organization.''
He pondered the cost to
his family of his dedication
to the fight against the racist
system of government that
jailed him for 27 years and
refused him permission to
attend the funeral of his
mother and of a son who
was killed in a car crash. In
court, he described himself
as ''the loneliest man'' during his mid-1990s divorce
from Winnie Mandela. As
president, he could not forge
lasting solutions to poverty,
unemployment and other
social ills that still plague
today's South Africa, which
has struggled to live up to its
rosy depiction as the ''Rainbow Nation.''
He secured near-mythical status in his country and
beyond. Last year, the South
African central bank
released new bank notes
showing his face, a robust,
smiling image of a man who
was meticulous about his
appearance and routinely
exercised while in prison.
South Africa erected statues
of him and named buildings
and other places after him.
He shared the 1993 Nobel
Peace Prize with F.W. de
Klerk, the country's last
white president. He was the
subject of books, films and
songs and a magnet for
celebrities.
In 2010, Mandela waved
to the crowd at the Soccer
City stadium at the closing
ceremony of the World Cup,
whose staging in South
Africa allowed the country,
and the continent, to shine
internationally. It was the
last public appearance for
the former president and
prisoner, who smiled broadly and was bundled up
against the cold.
One of the most memorable of his gestures toward
racial harmony was the day
in 1995 when he strode onto
the field before the Rugby
World Cup final in Johannesburg, and then again after
the game, when he congratulated the home team for its
victory over a tough New
Zealand team. Mandela was
wearing South African colors and the overwhelmingly
white crowd of 63,000 was
on its feet, chanting ''Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!''
It was typical of Mandela
to march headlong into a
bastion of white Afrikanerdom — in this case the temple of South African rugby
See DIES, page 7A